Achilles

This powerful, passionate, and beautifully crafted retelling of the epic tale of Achilles recreates Homer's fated hero in a new and striking reality.

“[A] dazzling, graphic vision . . . gives splendid new life to this ancient tale.” —Miami Herald

Born of the sea nymph Thetis by the mortal King Peleus, and hidden as a girl until Odysseus discovers him, Achilles becomes the Greeks' greatest warrior at Troy. Into his story comes a cast of fascinating characters—among them, Hector, Helen, Penthiseleia the Amazon Queen, and the centaur Chiron; and finally John Keats, whose writings form the basis of a meditation on the nature of identity and shared experience.

An unforgettable and deeply moving work of fiction, Achilles is also an affirmation of the story's enduring power to reach across centuries and cultures to the core of our imagination.

“Erudite and passionate . . . Cook has transformed the legend of Achilles into something entirely her own, a thoroughly modern study of masculinity, mortality, and honor.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“This welcome retelling of Achilles' career—savage yet sensitive, headstrong yet doomed—impels him to his death, but Elizabeth Cook's vivid narrative, together with John Keats waiting in the wings, restores the Homeric hero to his rightful impassioned life.” —Robert Fagles, translator of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey